Archive for October, 2009

Before you bury yourself in the available hundreds of how-to books, take another moment to ask what your problem is—some books are very nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step instructions, and others are more philosophical. As a critic, here’s my definition of a good book about writing: when you’re done reading it, you feel like writing something (rather than, say, going to Tolstoy’s tomb and burning your manuscript). There are more out there that I’ve heard good things about (tell us your favorites in the comments!); the below are what I’ve read so far.

I’m batting ideas about for something to work on for National Novel Writing Month, which has been an interesting chance for me to see my method in action—it’s been a while since I started a new project, and I’ve learned a lot about things like plotting and characterization since the last time I started from scratch with something.

On the character side, most writers ask a variation of “What do they want?” What is it that this character is struggling to get over the course of the story? PC-ness of a kind rules the romance writer’s answer to this question: “they want to find true love” is insufficient. (Who would want to write an entire novel about this person, let alone read it?) Like in real life, work on yourself first, buddy, and then dates will come.

This writing thing. Dreaming stuff up, getting it down, putting it together into something remotely coherent for the nonresidents of my brain. There is a stage of discipline in art, of making yourself forgo some fun stuff in order to sit in a chair (again) and type, of forming words and sentences and paragraphs. But there’s also some inchoate mass that has to have room—not beige or square please—and time to swirl and coalesce, break apart and broil and recoalesce into those ideas to which will be applied structure, cause and effect, and grammar. (more…)